Paris!

So, this past weekend I made my first trip out of Italy for this semester when some friends and I went to Paris for the weekend! We don't have class on Fridays, so we booked an early morning flight (super early... like leave the apartment at 3 AM early) through Ryanair, which is one of the budget carriers for cheap flights between European countries. That was definitely an experience in and of itself... the flight was cheap so I can't complain, but the boarding process was way different than what I'm used to! I would say you definitely get what you pay for, but it's worth it to be able to find such cheap airfare. Ryanair is really strict about carry-on bags so I was proud of how little I brought with me for the weekend... my family would have been shocked if they had seen my tiny suitcase because I'm always the one on family vacations who feels like she needs to pack everything.

We were lucky and got to stay in the apartment of a friend of one of the girls we went with, so once we got to Paris we got on a shuttle that drove us the hour and a half it took to get from the discount airport to the center of Paris, then dove right into the metro system and took a couple of metros to get to the apartment. It was way colder in Paris than it has been in Rome! Luckily, the person who owned the apartment was kind enough to offer us full use of her coat closet for the weekend, so we all bundled up in our borrowed winter parkas to explore the city.

Paris has the only Chipotle in this part of Europe (there's at least one in London, I think), and I am not ashamed at all to admit that the first place we went after we got settled into the apartment was to get lunch there! It was more expensive than it is at home, obviously, but it was absolutely positively worth it. Definitely satisfied my craving for cheesy Mexican food. 

YUM. 

Since it was Friday and we knew the museums would be less crowded, we decided to hit the Louvre right away. The Louvre is completely overwhelming but absolutely 120% worth the 11 euro ticket. There's so much we didn't get to see, but the things that we did get to see made up for that. Since I'm studying Roman art history as one of my classes, it was really exciting to be able to talk about some of the things we were seeing... and it kind of sort of helped me study for my art history midterm that I took today (my rationale for taking a trip the weekend before midterms... oops. No regrets.).

The famous pyramids! We entered through the main one in the middle.

Excited that we found a statue of Antinous that looked like one we had studied in class...

Mona Lisa!

The Mona Lisa was interesting (obviously first of all because it's the Mona Lisa) because it was so small! The way they have it arranged is interesting too because they have it directly across from a gigantic painting that takes up almost an entire wall. Of course everybody crowded around this one though.

We decided to go out to dinner that night, but we were not prepared for the difference between eating out in Rome and eating out in Paris. In Rome, if you want to go out to dinner, you shouldn't expect to get in anywhere before 8, and even 8 is a little early for dinner; sometimes we eat as late as 9. People in Rome usually go out right after they eat dinner, so it's one big night for them. Imagine our surprise when we decided to leave the apartment for dinner around 7:30 and struggled to find somewhere to eat dinner... apparently people in Paris eat a lot earlier than we are used to. We finally decided to take the metro to a stop that sounded promising and we still ended up walking around for a while before we found a cute little restaurant that was still open.

French onion soup! 

All of us at dinner the first night. 

The next day we got up and started with the Musee d'Orsay. I absolutely loved this museum. It's built in what used to be a train station and is full of famous paintings, like some by Van Gogh and Monet. There was one section we went to that was basically a room full of Monet paintings... I was in heaven. Definitely worth the trip to that museum!

We grabbed a quick bite to eat at a sandwich shop on the Champs d'Elysees, where we saw the infamous Abercrombie and Fitch that opened pretty recently with bouncers outside handling the line of people waiting to get inside.

We had planned on cooking for ourselves that night back at the apartment, but the friend who hooked us up with the apartment also has family in Paris and we split up in the afternoon so she could see her family. We all forgot that she still had the key to the apartment until she had left, so we couldn't get in to the apartment! It threw a wrench in our plans but looking back, it's kind of funny and it gave us a chance to find somewhere else to eat dinner that night until we met back up again. After dinner, we went to see the Eiffel Tower at night (now that I've done it, I'll say it's the only way to do it). It was also snowing which made it even more beautiful.

So beautiful at night!

In terms of going up into the tower, you can either go to the first level, the second level or all the way to the top. At first, I wanted to go all the way up, but because of the snow, they advised us that the view from the top would be foggy and probably obstructed, so we decided it wasn't worth it and went to the second level, which was still an AMAZING view of the city at night. 

The next day, we got up and went to Montmartre, where Sacre Couer is located. We stopped in a few shops along the way up the hill to the church, like this chocolate shop that had labeled itself as a mini chocolate museum:

Seriously, the French know their pastries and their chocolates. Delicious.

Sacre Couer!

The view from Sacre Couer was a beautiful panorama of Paris. It was pretty foggy, but we could still point out Notre Dame and the Eiffel Tower.

I was also trying to work on this week's photography assignment while I was in Paris, which is street photography. It's a little weird to take pictures of complete strangers, but that's that this picture of the guy playing his harp at the top of Montmartre is for: 

We couldn't go to Montmartre without going to the famous Moulin Rouge. It was a bit more of a walk than we had anticipated and there were definitely some interesting sights along the way, but hey, it's an experience. 

The last thing that we knew we had to see before we caught our shuttle back to the airport was Notre Dame. Notre Dame is probably one of my favorite churches that I have ever seen. Obviously it's impressive from the outside, but the inside is just as breathtaking. We didn't try to climb the bell tower steps, but I found out later that they were closed all weekend for the cold anyway, so we didn't miss out on anything. We were actually there in the middle of a mass, which was an amazing experience. The cathedrals and churches here are really good at balancing a respect for tourists and a respect for worshippers from what I've noticed... this wasn't the first time that I've stumbled into a church during the middle of a service. 

Pictures don't even do it justice... this place is beautiful.

Before we went back to the airport, we stopped for lunch, where I ordered a croque-monsieur, a traditional Parisian ham and cheese toasted sandwich. Yum! We also stumbled across a vintage store where you bought clothes and things based on how much they weighed; different categories had different prices per kilogram. I wish we could have had more time to spend looking around there because it was so cool! And of course we took advantage of the chance to have one last crepe before leaving the city.

It was stressful coming back and having to study for midterms this week (and I took my hardest one today, so I feel a lot better now!), but spending the weekend in Paris was definitely worth it. It felt good to come home to Rome, but I know that I need to go back to Paris eventually because I loved it! I have an oral and written Italian midterm left to take, and then I'm done with class for the week and off to spring break! I'm really excited because I have a trip planned to Ireland and the UK. I've never been there before, but I get to see some of my friends who are studying there right now which is making me unbelievably excited to go. Also, tomorrow morning I'm going to the final public audience with Pope Benedict, so the next few days are going to be full of adventure... oh the study abroad life.

One more thing... I finally watched this video EU vs Italy on YouTube this weekend and I'm obsessed. If you want a little taste of what it's like to live in Italy, just watch it. Maybe it's not as funny if you haven't been here before but I die laughing every time I see it...

Roman Catacombs

Short post today!

My art history midterm is going to be killer next week, but I love the class for all of the cool places we get to go. Today, we went to the Mausoleum of Constantina (Constantine's oldest daughter) and Sant'Agnese, which were pretty cool, but after we finished at those two places our professor took us to the Catacombs of Priscilla, one of the 5 catacombs in Rome (out of 60) that you can actually visit. The idea of the catacombs is a little creepy, but it was really cool to see them! Catacombs are basically underground Christian cemeteries. Our professor really has a thing against the Paris catacombs and he doesn't consider them real catacombs, though. The catacombs we visited have mostly been excavated and looted by grave robbers, so there aren't very many places where you would still have bodies buried.

When this was a cemetery, those niches in the walls would have had bodies in them that would be sealed with terracotta or marble plaques in front.

One month down!

Well, we've officially been in Rome for a month! That's kind of scary for me to think about, because I've absolutely fallen in love with this city and this country and I cannot believe I only have about two and a half months left before I go home. This weekend was definitely the best weekend we've had since we've been in Rome... we did so many different things and I feel like I really got to experience the city!

Thursday was Valentine's Day, so we celebrated on our own with a lovely meal at the residence complete with Valentine's Day cake, sparkling red wine, and ice cream. Temple sponsored a trip to the Umbria region on Friday, and we had to meet up with the group at 7:15, so Thursday was an early night for us, but it was definitely worth it because Umbria was AMAZING!

Umbria is the region just north of Lazio, where Rome is located. It's kind of the hidden gem of Italy according to our professor...  a lot of people know where it is but not how much it produces for the country. We managed to see an olive oil factory, a winery, and a world-famous pottery factory all in one day.

We started the day off at an olive oil factory that produces the most popular brand of olive oil in Italy (and apparently you can buy it in the US). We sat through a presentation with a professional olive oil who taught us all about how olive oil is made and how to taste it:

Our olive oil expert

They poured it into cups for us, and we had to hold them in our hands for a bit to warm up the olive oil to just about body temperature. You have to smell it first to get a sense of what it will taste like and to help you remember the different kinds. Then, to taste it, you sip a little and hold it in your mouth, and then you breathe in through your mouth a few times. Finally, you breathe in through your nose to get the full taste of the olive oil. We tried three different kinds and they were all a little different He also dispelled some myths about olive oil for us and taught us all about the proper way to cook with olive oil. For instance, he said his wife bakes with olive oil instead of vegetable oil, but that he never, ever, ever heats olive oil... which is not good because that's how we've been cooking literally every single day! Apparently when you heat olive oil (especially to fry anything), you lose all of the vitamins and it turns into trans fat... oops. But then the professor we were with said that only the real experts will tell you that and that everybody in Italy still cooks with olive oil the way we have been, so I don't feel too bad.

Before we left for our next stop, they let us try some bruschetta made with different types of olive oil. It was all delicious! 

Yummy bruschetta!

Our next stop was the Novelli winery. They had arranged for a tour of the entire winery for us and then a tasting of three of their most popular wines.

The vineyards 

More bruschetta that they served in between the wines!

Smelling the wine! This was the last one they served us.

Our guide at the winery was a professional wine taster... his job is to taste the wines as they are fermenting every day to decide when they are ready to be bottled! How cool of a job would that be? I imagine it would get pretty old after a while, though... especially when you have to taste wines that aren't ready yet and don't taste nearly as good as what they served us!

Finally, we stopped at a world-famous pottery factory... seriously, they make pottery that Crate & Barrel and Neiman Marcus sell. This region is pretty famous for ceramics anyway, but this factory is the best.

The current owner of the factory (it's family-owned!) 

Some of the unpainted pottery

One of the painting rooms where the artists work (everything is hand-painted!) 

Some of the painted pottery

Deruta is so famous for its pottery that the pottery in its showroom was ridiculously expensive (we're talking 80+ euro for a plate here). But luckily our professor knew a place just down the road the produces the same kind of thing for much cheaper, and he ended up getting us an even bigger discount, so I picked up a few things there! The road we traveled was full of pottery and ceramic shops!

Our day in Umbria was long, but it was definitely worth it. I feel like I'm getting to know more about Italy as a country and about how different the different regions are (just like states in the US). But the rest of the weekend in Rome was just as eventful. Saturday morning, we got up and visited the Forum again because one of our professors has family in town this weekend and offered to take us when she took her nephew. Obviously we jumped at the opportunity because she knows absolutely everything about it, so it was nice to get another tour of it with some pretty cool stories!

I did some shopping on Saturday after our visit to the Forum, and Saturday night we went out to a few different clubs in Rome. The club scene here is really interesting because from what I've seen so far, all of the clubs are so different, and some of them can be really stuck up about who they let in, especially when it comes to letting guys in. We ended up at Art Cafe, which is cool because it is underneath the Villa Borghese (like Rome's version of Central Park). The crowd was a really interesting mix of people, and I'm not really sure it was my scene, but I'm glad I went because I feel like it's definitely one of the things you have to do in Rome. 

Today we did some really cool stuff, though. As I'm sure most of you know, the pope is resigning, which is something really huge for the city of Rome! Most of us were pretty shocked when the announcement was first made (I didn't even know that was a possibility). It's going to be really exciting to be in Rome for something like this. Today we went to Angelus, which is a weekly address that the pope makes every Sunday at noon in St. Peter's Square. This week's Angelus was a special one because it's the first one he's made since he first made the announcement that he is resigning. Obviously I'm not Catholic, so the address itself didn't mean much to me, but it was really neat to hear him make his speech (in Italian, of course) and then do the Angelus prayer with everybody in the square. At the end of it, he addressed the crowd again and thanked everybody for all of the prayers and kind thoughts throughout the past week since he made his big announcement. This was my favorite part because he repeated it in several languages (I counted for sure English, German, Polish, French, Spanish and Italian), and you could hear the different groups of people cheer for their language. He even called out specific cities in Rome and thanked them for their support! 

Here's an article about today's Angelus that explains it a little better than I can:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/feb/17/pope-large-crowd-angelus-blessing 

Today was also really cool because it was the first Sunday of Lent! As if the resignation of the pope isn't special enough...

In the crowd of 50,000 people!

There he is! 

Everybody cheering at the end of the prayer

I cannot believe I am lucky enough to be in Rome for an experience like this. Trust me, you'll be hearing more from me as the activities progress!

Finally, to finish off our whirlwind of a weekend, we went back to the Colosseum because our tickets from the Forum yesterday were still good for the Colosseum, and we just couldn't let them go to waste.

Tara hadn't been there yet, so she was super excited!

Weekends like this make me glad that I'm not traveling every single weekend I'm here, because I absolutely love Rome, and I would hate to miss out on weekends like this. We are going to Paris next weekend, though, and I cannot wait! First of all because it's Paris and second of all because there is a Chipotle in Paris that we most definitely will be visiting. Yum!

Tivoli

I'm taking an art history class called the Art and Architecture of Rome, and every week, we have one on-site meeting (things like museums, churches, or sets of ruins) and one lecture. However, this week we also had an all-day outing to Tivoli on Friday, since none of us normally have classes on Fridays. We met up with our class early in the morning and our professor (who looks like Johnny Depp) led us on a bus up into the foothills of the Appenine Mountains, which are about an hour outside of the city. Tivoli is now a pretty normal town, but it has two amazing places that take you back to ancient Rome: the Villa Adriana and the Villa d'Este (which is more Renaissance Rome, but whatever).

The Villa Adriana is the name for the complex that was where the Emperor Hadrian made his home when he was emperor of Rome. Now it's mostly in ruins, because much like the Forum, materials from the villa were taken to be used in newer buildings (some of the materials from Hadrian's Villa ended up in Villa d'Este). However, even in ruins, the villa was still amazing.

The Villa Adriana housed Hadrian and the majority of his court, and it was where he did most of his emperor business when he was in Rome. He actually spent a lot of time outside of Rome while he was emperor, and he didn't like being in the city at all.

The entrance to a "secret" underground road used by slaves
to carry supplies in and out of and around the villa.

What's left of a temple that used to be there

Ruins of a fish pool that Hadrian had built for himself

My favorite part of the villas... remains of a large swimming pool
 that originally would have been surrounded by these
columns, arches and statues! It was beautiful.

A wall that surrounded a large courtyard

 After we were done at Villa Adriana, our professor took us down into the modern-day town of Tivoli for lunch. We all split up but he ended up at the same restaurant as us, so of course we invited him to sit with us so he didn't awkwardly sit by himself right next to our table. He then proceeded to drink basically an entire bottle of wine and a glass of grappa before he led us on our next outing to Villa d'Este, so that definitely made the afternoon pretty interesting...

Villa d'Este absolutely blew me away. It was built by a cardinal who was appointed as the governor of Tivoli, and he absolutely spared no expense. We didn't spend much time inside the buildings themselves, because the gardens are breathtaking.

Some of the beautifully preserved frescoes

Marble floors made with marble taken from Villa Adriana 

The main building from outside in the gardens 

A view of the gardens from the villa

Part of a fountain called "Little Rome" with pieces that represent different
parts of Rome. This is Romulus and Remus being fed by the she-wolf. 

View of the countryside and Rome from the top of the gardens... we could actually
see all the way to the dome of St. Peter's! 

One of the many amazing fountains

Firenze and Venezia

We made our first real trip this weekend to Florence and Venice! Needless to say, it was an amazing weekend. We went with Euroadventures, which I'll admit I was a little skeptical about at first, but it was a great experience. There was a small group of us who left Rome on Friday morning with our Euroadventures guide on a train to Florence (that definitely felt European!), and we had Friday and Sunday to explore Florence with a day trip to Venice on Saturday.

Florence definitely didn't disappoint, once again. Florence is such a beautiful city and is one of my favorite cities in the world. When I first considered studying abroad, I really thought that I wanted to study abroad in Florence, but I ended up applying to programs in Florence and Rome just in case. In the end, something told me that I should go to Rome, for a few reasons: it's a bigger city (so easier to travel in and out of), there's more to do, and it's less touristy. While I absolutely love the city of Florence, this weekend definitely confirmed for me that I made the right decision. Florence is so much smaller than Rome--you can walk across the entire city in about a half hour. That would take you hours to do in Rome (and it took us 8 hours to walk all the way around the historic center, which you can do in no time at all in Florence!). Also, almost everybody we came across in Florence speaks English and would prefer to speak English with the Americans than Italian. This actually stems from the fact that Dante, essentially the father of the Italian language, was a Florentine, so the people in Florence take their language very seriously and don't like it very much when people who don't speak fluent Italian "butcher" their language, as they put it. In Rome, a lot of people speak English, but they don't mind when I try to speak Italian with them, and a lot of times they will even try to speak with me and teach me different things, which I absolutely love.

The first thing we did when we got to Florence was walk from the train station to our hostel (which was only about a ten-minute walk... very convenient!) and check in for the weekend. This was my firs hostel experience and it wasn't bad! Our hostel was very nice and had amenities like a restaurant, pool, free wifi and a computer lab. We started our adventures in Florence with a walking tour of the city that Euroadventures had set up for us. It allowed us to see most of the city and figure out what we would want to do with the rest of the weekend. Since I've been to Florence before, I had seen a lot of what our tour guide showed us, but I learned some new things, too.

For instance, Ponte Vecchio, the oldest bridge in Florence that is home to gold and silver shops, was the only bridge in Florence that was not destroyed by the Nazis during WWII. The reason for this is that Hitler wanted to make it his base of operations, so he instructed his soldiers to destroy every bridge but the Ponte Vecchio. Then, when the Allies came to liberate Florence, the Germans thought they had it under control because they stood guard at what they thought was the only way to get into the heart of Florence. However, back in the times of the Medici family in Florence, one of the family members decided he wanted a way to get from the Palazzo Vecchio (what is now City Hall) on one side of the river to another residence on the other side of the river without having to deal with the public, as our guide put it. So there's actually a corridor that leads from the Palazzo Vecchio all the way through what is now the Uffizi Gallery through the tops of the buildings on the Ponte Vecchio to the other Medici residence. The only reason we could see it is because our guide pointed it out to us--otherwise you would have never made the connection that all of those buildings were attached by this one corridor. The Nazis never figured it out, either. So when the Americans were stranded on one side of the river, the Italians were kind enough to fill them in about this little corridor, which is how the Allies made it to the other side of the Arno and liberated Florence without being detected by the Germans.

That little archway connecting the Palazzo Vecchio and the Uffizi gallery is where that little corridor starts!

Ponte Vecchio, with the corridor running across the tops of the gold and silver shops.

We also visited the famous leather markets in San Lorenzo on Friday. They definitely know their leather in Florence! I splurged and bought a beautiful leather backpack from a vendor who was more than eager to take out his lighter and prove to me that it was real leather. They take that pretty seriously in Florence--you basically know that if something is in the leather market, it's real leather, because the vendors have to be licensed to sell in the market and they can get in big trouble for selling fake leather.

Saturday morning, we got up bright and early to meet up with about 100 other students from Florence to make the trip to Venice for Carnival, which is kind of like a European Mardi Gras. I was really excited to see Venice, but this was the most disappointing day of the weekend. First of all, it was about a 3.5 hour bus ride, and the bus we rode had a broken heater that actually blew out cold air the entire time. That was uncomfortable enough, but it was horribly cold, rainy and windy when we finally got to Venice--so much so that they had actually cancelled the Carnival events for the day, which was definitely a disappointment. There was supposed to be a huge festival going on in St. Mark's Square, but the most we got to see of Carnival were a few random groups of people dressed up in the full Carnival costumes now and then.

Me with my Carnival mask!

St. Mark's Square, where all of the Carnival events were supposed to be happening.

As much as we got to see of what was supposed to be Carnival...
a small parade of people dressed in the Carnival costumes!

Venice is a beautiful city, but there isn't really much to do when the weather is bad (and it was absolutely awful--I broke two umbrellas throughout the day because the wind was so bad). We ended up wandering from shop to shop to cafe to cafe all day, which can get old. I did go in to see St. Mark's Basilica, but that's about the biggest thing to see in Venice (besides walking around and seeing all of the canals, which we didn't feel like doing too much of because of the weather). Obviously there was nothing we could do about the weather, but I wish I had gotten the chance to explore more of the city than we did. The cold did give me an excuse to try some mulled wine (which is hot wine with spices in it), which was absolutely delicious! I also loved exploring all of the Murano glass shops. Hopefully I will have the chance to go back when the weather is nicer so I can see more of the city!

Sunday we again had the whole day to explore Florence. We started the day with a walk to Piazzale Michelangelo, which is a square on the other side of the Arno from the historic center that has a beautiful view of the city. Seriously, any famous picture of Florence you've ever seen was probably taken from this piazza. It was definitely a trek to get there (it took us about a half hour from the hostel, but the uphill part was a beast), but the view was amazing and we also got to go to one of the oldest churches in Florence (San Miniato al Monte), which is just a little bit further up from Piazzale Michelangelo. It had some amazing frescoes and has a monastery attached to it. Piazzale Michelangelo also has just one of the city's many "fake Davids," although this one is made of bronze, which is interesting.

The beautiful view from Piazzale Michelangelo

After Piazzale Michelangelo, some of us went to the Accademia, where the real David is housed. The Accademia was actually built specifically for the David. One of the most notable replicas is in Piazza della Signoria, where the Palazzo Vecchio is, but nothing compares to the original. During tourist season, you have to book tickets in advance to see it, but we managed to walk right in, which was amazing (and cheaper!). The gallery also has quite a few unfinished Michelangelo sculptures and paintings by other artists, but obviously the David is its main attraction. I've seen it before, and I still was amazed by it. Seeing the unfinished sculptures that line the hallway leading to the David actually makes you appreciate the David that much more because you can see more of the process that it would take to end up with something like the David. Fun fact: the David was actually commissioned for the Duomo, but they had no way to lift it that high, so it was originally placed in Piazza della Signoria until it was moved to protect it.

Managed to snap a picture... oops! So magnificent!

Il Duomo 

Inside Il Duomo

I also went back to the Duomo before the day was over, which is truly a magnificent building. The outside is so intricately decorated that you could spend hours looking at it and not see everything. After one last stroll through the leather markets on our way back to the hostel to meet up with the group to go back to the train station, my weekend in Florence was over, but I'm already itching to go back.